


Chiaroscuro

by Amrita_Vein



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Art History, Blow Jobs, Educational, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Nude Modeling, Nude Photos, Photography, Sexy Times, eli is creative, mastrubation, thrawn uses command voice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 03:04:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrita_Vein/pseuds/Amrita_Vein
Summary: Chi·a·ro·scu·ro: an effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on something.Thrawn's new interest is the ancient art of dark room photography. Eli is his muse.There's also a miniature art history thesis at the end.





	Chiaroscuro

At this point, no one onboard the  _ Chimaera  _ was really surprised when the Admiral would develop a new and sudden interest in an obscure concept. Admiral Thrawn’s ideas were often seemingly random and disconnected from their Task Force’s mandate, but one does not argue with success. And so it fell upon his aide, Commander Eli Vanto, to see to it that Admiral Thrawn’s normal responsibilities of command were still carried out even though the chiss would prefer to sequester himself for days at a time in his office, fixating on his interest  _ de rigueur. _ This time, his focus of study was on the ancient art form of darkroom photography. 

Thousands of years before the advent of the holonet, images were captured from real life by exposing film to controlled amounts of light inside of a camera. The ancient humans then processed the film with various chemicals in a ‘dark room’ (Eli thought that sounded like something one would find on Lord Vader’s Flagship) to produce black and white reproductions of still reality. For various reasons that were still unknown to him, Eli’s cerulean lover was currently fascinated with Dark Room Photography. In fact, the Admiral had gone so fars as to have a fully operational darkroom and photography studio reconstructed in one of the  _ Chimaera’s  _ cargo holds _ . _

Eli and Thrawn were currently in said photography studio. Eli, gracefully reclining naked on a table with his trim and muscled back facing the camera while Thrawn meticulously adjusted studio lighting instruments and settings on a camera he had somehow procured. The camera seemed to be made of more rust than metal, but whatever, it kept Thrawn interested enough. The sealing strip on his collar undone, and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Thrawn was hunched over, looking through a tiny viewfinder and adjusting a dial on the contraption. It might have been called a light meter. 

Yawning, Eli stretched out and huffed “Ya know, I’m not just an  _ Odaloo _ for you to play with.”

“ _ Odalisque _ .”

“ _ Odalisque.  _ Fine, well whatever. I still remember what that word means anyway and I know I’m more than it. I’m also tired of laying here and it’s kriffing cold. Aren’t you done yet Thrawn?”

“Perfection takes time, Eli.”

“Whatever you say Thrawn. Guess you told me not to pose with any modern tech, I’ll just have to rub one out while you play with all those buttons and stuff. What exactly are you doing right now anyway?”

“I am adjusting the shutter speed to allow for less light to enter into the camera. I intend to create a sharp contrast of values and capture as much detail as possible. Only by having a slow, wide open shutter can one capture true detail. I am using film that is ISO 200 and---”

“You know, I can think of a couple  _ other things _ that are really good  _ wide open _ .” Eli interrupted and looked over his shoulder, winking at Thrawn, and reached a hand between his legs. He began to cup his balls and willing his shaft to hardness.

Undeterred, the Chiss continued on with his lecture, reciting all that he had learned of photographic techniques, and he had learned quite a lot. Thrawn was the very definition of thorough and while that had many advantages in life, Eli found there were also surreal moments as well. This was definitely one of the surreal moments, laying naked on a table in a locked room with Thrawn and  _ not _ having his hands and mouth claiming every inch of his lover. 

While tweaking the camera settings, Thrawn continued on, seemingly oblivious to Eli’s newfound solution to his boredom. “The film speed is a low value number, and that means it processes at a slower speed. The more light and time, the more detail. I wish to capture all the subtle nuances of the details arranged before me.”

“Like the ’ _ subtle nuances _ ’ of all this blood rushing into my cock? Uuugh, you know I’m not just an ‘ _ arrangement of forms’ _ or ‘ _ assemblage/pastiche/collage _ ’ thingy Thrawn. I also have needs that need to be addressed. You have your hobbies but you, well, you’re one of  _ my  _ hobbies.” Eli winked then at Thrawn, who briefly looked up from adjusting his camera. When Eli mocked Thrawn like this, his voice took on an easy teasing tone while his caf brown eyes sparkled with love. Now that he’d found a way to occupy himself on the table, he wasn’t so bored, and he enjoyed being able to rankle his Admiral from time to time. If he was honest with himself, it’d been such a long time since he’d had to get himself off by his lonesome that this was… interesting to say the least.

  
  


Eli continued to touch himself with his right hand, writhing langously on the table he was laying on, pulling at the dark grey gaberwool sheet beneath him. As the fabric bunched and pulled in his fingers, Thrawn spoke up, using the voice he used on the bridge when commanding starfighters. “Do that again, Eli.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. Eli  _ liked _ it.

Eli moaned and flexed his lower back while the fingers of his left hand gripped the sheet tighter and tugged at the gaberwool. 

“That action creates dynamic shadows with the fabric beneath you. Please do not move your left hand for the moment. I enjoy the flow of lines that have been created.”  _ Damn it Thrawn, now I’m stuck like this?! _

His left hand a prisoner to the gaberwool, Eli stroked himself harder. He could feel the beads of sweat forming on his back and vaguely wondered if they caught in all the studio lights aimed at him. He flexed his legs and contracted his body, muscles tight and straining. His  _ everything _ was straining. It felt shameful touching himself and being told how to pose for Thrawn, on display like a piece of meat. And then he used his damned Bridge Voice to tell him to keep his left hand down. Stars, how he liked this. Panting close to the edge, his eyes snapped open in shock when Thrawn’s form and a very bright light fixture suddenly appeared in his visual range. 

“What the hell Thrawn?! Warn me next time you sneak up like that.”

“My apologies Eli, but the sheen of perspiration on your back would be better highlighted if I moved the light fixture to a different location. Ergo, I decided to adjust the angle of the light. The contrast between the beads of sweat on your back and the harsh shadows created by the light fixture is quite stunning.” Thrawn trailed his cool fingers up along the curve of Eli’s spine, briefly resting his hand on the younger man’s neck before carding his fingers through the mahogany brown sweat-soaked hair of his lover. 

He paused for a moment looking at Eli below him and smiled, eyes glowing, before turning back to his camera and continuing the lecture. “And although this image will be rendered in black and white, the interplay of values is extremely nuanced, I do believe it will be an acceptable portrayal of the scene before me.”

“You know,” Eli panted, eyes fluttering and breath ragged, “you’re always welcome to join in on ‘the scene before you’ if you want. I’m sure that camera of yours has some kinda remote shutter release. Something like a beck-and-call.”

“I.. I hadn’t considered that… perhaps.” Thrawn’s focus was beginning to break, he knew he should not have stopped to touch Eli, the Lysatran was the undoing of him every time. Diction suffering, the Admiral refused to make eye contact with his Commander before him. Eli knew he was finally winning.  _ About damn time, I can hardly hold onto myself. _

“So what do you need to do to get the camera set up to take photos of us together?”

“Ideally, I would take a roll of photographs of you and I in the studio lighting and outline how the figures would be arranged in each composition. I would likely need an additional studio assistant to two to adjust the lighting as our positions and expressions changed.”

“Hmm, well, I don’t wanna have anyone else in this room with me but you, so we’re gonna have to improvise. Now come over here and kiss me.”

“One moment, I am adjusting the-”

“Just kriffing kiss me already Thrawn.”

Thrawn finally had to acquiesce to the request Eli made of him. Eli was too damn needy if he was already begging like that- normally he was much more restrained in vocalizing his desires. And in the infrared, Thrawn could tell that his human’s entire body was deeply flushed. Leaving the camera on the tripod, Thrawn walked over to his human, who was still dutifully clutching at the gerberwool sheet with his left hand. Thrawn leaned down and ran his hand along the side of Eli’s skull before claiming his mouth with his lips. Although he’d intended for the kiss to be a chaste interruption from his work, it quickly vaulted into a triumphal landscape of hands and lips and moans. 

Eli bucked up against Thrawn and moaned loudly while grasping at his hair with his right hand. He dug his fingernails into the thin skin of Thrawn’s skull and  _ moaned. “ _ Ineedyouplease.”

“Eli” Thrawn breathed, as he broke away from the desperate kiss “I am not finished with this photography project, I must to return to it-”

“ _ Then change the project. Thrawn.”  _ Eli then put a strange inflection into his voice that he rarely used. It was needy and it was demanding. It was the inflection he used when he commanded Thrawn to do a Thing.

“I would deconstruct you this instant Eli.”

“Do it. Take me apart piece by piece. It’s already happening Thra--.”

Eli’s eyes rolled back into his skull as Thrawn’s lips descended around his cock, taking him into his mouth. His hips rolled against the table and he let out an unfiltered moan of  _ need.  _ “Yes. Please.  _ Thrawnnnnnnnn _ .”

“You are so much more than my odalisque Eli.” Thrawn murmured as he swirled his tongue over his human’s head. Eli gasped then, eyes dilating. “You are my altar, you are the cathedral I worship at, you are what I bare my soul and body naked before. You are the place I  _ worship.” _

And then Eli was gone. A white out, a bliss he felt on occasion but this time it felt like someone had hit his skull with a durasteel bat. Thrawn had just said  _ that.  _ And Eli’s body was spent and quaking in the after effects. 

At that moment, Thrawn got up and smiled down at his human. “Now, will you stay still a moment longer while I setup these next photographs?”

**Author's Note:**

> 'Odaloo' is Eli trying to remember the art history term 'Odalisque' which is a romanticized depiction of 19th century virgin female slave figures often found as attendants/in harems for Ottoman men of power. Odalisques were popular subjects for western artists who did Orientalist-theme paintings. The western fascination with 'the orient' created a demand for exotic and bright compositions that often featured the local people (mostly of color and/or non-Christian) in passive and licentious roles. This artistic movement fostered the notion of the "Orient" as an entity to be consumed through its varied pre-industrial craft traditions.
> 
> I would believe that Eli sees many parallels to Orientalism in his lived experiences in the Outer Rim, the sexualization of certain alien species, and prejudice/ways people have tried to exploit he and Thrawn being 'different'.


End file.
